Pregnant by the Prince of Lust(BL)

Luceriel’s POV

He had wanted to be the one to announce it. After everything, after months of hiding, of watching Seraphel’s training from a mountain no one thought to search, of swallowing his own pride at every turn just to keep the truth contained a little longer, he had at least wanted the small satisfaction of saying the words himself.

And Pazuzu had ruined even that.

All his life, Luceriel had assumed his fated mate, whenever they finally revealed themselves, would be some docile little omega, someone soft and pliant, someone he could shape and rule over the way he ruled over everything else in his life.

Instead, fate had handed him a demon prince who answered to no one, who seemed to delight in every ounce of chaos he caused, who was, if Luceriel was entirely honest with himself, considerably more ruthless than he was.

It felt like an unfair pairing in every conceivable way.

Pazuzu looked as though he were enjoying every second of it. Luceriel, meanwhile, felt as though he were being slowly unraveled in front of an audience of his own brothers.

"And who the hell are you?" Lumiel was the first to speak, his sword still resting loosely against his shoulder, his tone somewhere between mocking and genuinely curious. "What exactly makes you worthy of being deemed Luceriel’s mate?"

"He is Pazuzu," Uriel answered before anyone else could. "The Demon Prince."

The room fell silent again, heavier this time, and for the first time in longer than Luceriel could remember, he felt his heart racing, an unfamiliar, uncomfortable heat crawling up the back of his neck. He could feel every set of eyes at that table settle on him at once, and beneath their silence he could already imagine the thoughts running behind them, the disbelief, the judgment, perhaps even the pity. Pride, of all sins, did not survive well under pity.

"I wanted to say the words myself," Luceriel muttered, more to himself than to any of them.

Sariel was the first to break the quiet, a slow, cutting smile spreading across his face. "How fitting," he said, "that Pride himself cannot even claim credit for his own engagement announcement."

"Careful," Luceriel warned, his voice going cold and clipped.

"Careful of what, exactly?" Sariel leaned back in his seat, entirely unbothered. "You spent centuries lecturing the rest of us about dignity, about restraint, about never letting anyone see us as anything less than in control. And here you are, mated to a demon who cannot even be bothered to let you finish a sentence."

"At least my mate did not require chaining to a wall," Luceriel shot back.

Something flickered dark and dangerous behind Sariel’s amber-gold eyes. "Do not speak of Zephyrus."

"I will speak of whomever I please in my own pavilion."

"Then perhaps you should have thought of that before insulting him."

"I have said nothing that was not already true."

"And I could say quite a bit about your fated mate as well," Sariel said, his voice sharpening, "starting with the fact that half this table only just learned the very prince you warned us about turned out to be your own fated mate, one you kept hidden from every last one of us, and the other half is still deciding whether he ought to be executed on sight."

Azriel raised a hand between them before Luceriel could answer. "Enough, both of you. We have something far more urgent to discuss. The future of every one of us hangs on it."

"The future," Lumiel cut in, "can wait until we finish deciding what to do about the demon prince currently sitting tied to a chair in the middle of it."

"He is correct," Taizel added, swirling what remained in his goblet. "I would rather understand the greater threat before anything else."

"The greater threat," Tobias said quietly, still favoring the side Uriel had helped him settle into, "is that this same demon prince single-handedly overran Elysium and left half of it in ruin. I would think that alone warrants some caution."

"No one asked for your opinion on family matters," Sariel snapped, rounding on him. "You would do well to remember whose table you are sitting at."

"He has every right to speak," Uriel said, voice rising to match him.

"He has no right at all—"

"Enough!"

The word tore through the room like a blade, Azriel’s voice dropping into something none of them had ever heard from him before, a resonant, layered tone that rattled the walls of the pavilion and silenced every single person seated at that table in an instant, mid-argument, mid-breath.

He had released his celestial Voice, and this time it affected them all, something that had never once happened before.

Luceriel felt his own throat close around whatever he had been about to say, his jaw locking shut entirely against his will, and he stared at his brother with something dangerously close to awe.

How, Luceriel wondered, staring at his brother, had Azriel grown so powerful without any of them noticing?

"Now that I have your attention," Azriel said, quieter now, though the authority in his voice hadn’t fully faded, "I would like to explain what Castiel told me, before anyone else decides to interrupt."

A complete silence fell over the table, and he cleared his throat before he began to speak.

Azriel laid it all out plainly, the vision Castiel had shown him, the seal weakening around Draca with every day that passed, the prophecy foretold centuries before any of them had even drawn breath.

He spoke of blood rising against blood, of alliances forged out of necessity rather than trust, of a single light standing against a darkness vast enough to swallow the horizon whole. He told them everything, holding nothing back, and by the time he finished, even Lumiel had set his sword down entirely, and Taizel’s goblet sat forgotten on the table.

Pazuzu, still bound to his chair, began to clap slowly.

"Well said," he offered, a faint smirk curling at the corner of his mouth. "Every word of it is true. Though I might add, the truth runs deeper still. Draca will not simply destroy this world when he wakes. He intends to see it ruined entirely, down to its very foundations. There will be nothing left standing, nothing left to rebuild from."

"Then it seems this is a matter for the seven of us to handle," Taizel said, setting his goblet aside fully now. "I fail to see what use a demon prince has in solving a problem the sins themselves are more than capable of resolving."

"You are not needed," Luceriel said flatly, before he could stop himself, though he wasn’t entirely certain if the words were meant for Taizel or for the fear still curling tight in his own chest.

"Of course you would say that," Sariel murmured, folding his arms. "Defending your ruthless mate, even now."

"This has nothing to do with that."

"Does it not?"

"No," Luceriel snapped, rising halfway out of his seat before catching himself. "This is not about defending him, Sariel. I saw it myself. I saw another vision, only minutes before this meeting began."

"What is this vision?" Seraphel, who had remained silent through all the chaos, finally spoke up.

Luceriel stared at Seraphel for a long moment before he answered, each word slow and deliberate. "The world will fall, but not by Draca’s hand alone. I saw you. I saw your child, too, though I could not make out his face, standing beside Draca as the world came apart."

The room went utterly still as soon as he finished speaking.